Following last week's Nintendo financial report, the company has just posted a translation of the investor Q&A session with president Satoru Iwata. Iwata had plenty to say -- there is a very high ratio of A to Q.
Talking about the downward revision of sales forecasts, Iwata classified the Japanese market as "?the least robust market in the world today with regard to home console systems," due in part to an "an overall lifestyle shift where many forms of entertainment are enjoyed while on the go or during spare time."
Moving on to the worldwide market, Iwata expressed an interest in developing new products to appeal more to Western interests. He revealed that Nintendo is "working on U.S. and Europe-originated Touch Generations products, which may have a smaller demand in Japan than overseas." "One or two" of these new games will be out this year. He also revealed that the hit Wagamama Fashion Girls Mode would be released internationally.
Iwata confirmed that the DSi will not sell for the same price as the DS Lite in America and Europe, citing "current foreign currency exchange rates." He did not identify specific prices.
The SD storage update, which allows downloaded content to be saved directly to SD, is still on the way in the spring, but Iwata did not date it. He said that the program Nintendo announced for Japan, offering 500 Wii Points to customers who help friends take their Wiis online, would start concurrently with this update.
Reader Comments (18)
Posted: Feb 5th 2009 3:50PM (Unverified) said
This SD card solution: I assume this means we can save games directly to SD cards as well as run them directly off them from the Wii Menu?
If not, what a great non-solution Nintendo. It's like they only decided to fix half of the out of spite. Not to mention the time it's taken for this to come... Yikes.
If not, what a great non-solution Nintendo. It's like they only decided to fix half of the out of spite. Not to mention the time it's taken for this to come... Yikes.
Posted: Feb 5th 2009 5:56PM Mr Khan said
It would be rather brilliant, though. It would open up the shop channel as somewhat of an impulse-buy thing, where you wouldn't have to worry about micromanaging, just put it on the SD Card
They will do something to make playing them from the SD Card easier, but coming from them that could mean an insane variety of things
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They will do something to make playing them from the SD Card easier, but coming from them that could mean an insane variety of things
Posted: Feb 5th 2009 10:10PM JoshMilewski said
Nope, you can only download directly to the SD card; you can't play games from the SD card.
So, it's totally utterly useless.
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So, it's totally utterly useless.
Posted: Feb 5th 2009 4:14PM hami83 said
Ugh....You KNOW they already have the SD solution ready to go, but like Nintendo they hold it for marketing reasons... God damn it's annoying! lol
I stopped getting Wiiware games a while ago because it was getting too annoying.
Common logic would be that more space equals more games bought, but apparently not to NIntendo.
I stopped getting Wiiware games a while ago because it was getting too annoying.
Common logic would be that more space equals more games bought, but apparently not to NIntendo.
Posted: Feb 5th 2009 5:47PM lanadapter said
Why would nintendo hold the update back for marketing reasons? If anything an intentional delay is a bad idea PR-wise.
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Posted: Feb 5th 2009 5:49PM hami83 said
Cause I'm sure the marketing guys at Nintendo feel so.
Maybe there's a big WiiWare DL Nintendo is holding back or a service, like the television service or something.
I'm not saying they ARE holding it for marketing reasons, but I'd bet money that they are holding it for some stupid reasons.
And it's not bad PR when Nintendo just keeps saying it's not ready cause we wouldn't know if they are telling the truth or not.
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Maybe there's a big WiiWare DL Nintendo is holding back or a service, like the television service or something.
I'm not saying they ARE holding it for marketing reasons, but I'd bet money that they are holding it for some stupid reasons.
And it's not bad PR when Nintendo just keeps saying it's not ready cause we wouldn't know if they are telling the truth or not.
Posted: Feb 5th 2009 8:37PM lanadapter said
But that is bad pr because of the ridiculous assumptions people make, such as the one you're making now.
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Posted: Feb 5th 2009 5:57PM Mr Khan said
More western emphasis would mean that Nintendo of America would probably be the first to release them, which is good for us, i think.
Posted: Feb 5th 2009 6:47PM JXCGunrunna said
This 500 wii points thing is a wonderful idea/marketing campaign. it should get more ppl online. now they just need to get a decent online system setup so its not so damn hard. hopefully their next piece of hardware will be set up spacifically to take advantage of online play and comunication
Posted: Feb 5th 2009 7:14PM p07h3ad said
They should've used USB thumbdrives for storage, SD cards are fine as long as I can go past 2GB, idk maybe its just the "I gotta have plenty of space" whore inside me,
I'm running low in space on my 2GB sd anyway what with the RB2 and GT:WT DLC, and save game backups, and putting my VC and WiiWare games that won't fit on the Wii
if anything Nintendo should say "Hey guys the SD solution will include the use of SDHC cards so now the 'I gotta have lots of space' whore inside you can use a 16GB SDHC card" that would make me happy panda,
happy panda indeed
I'm running low in space on my 2GB sd anyway what with the RB2 and GT:WT DLC, and save game backups, and putting my VC and WiiWare games that won't fit on the Wii
if anything Nintendo should say "Hey guys the SD solution will include the use of SDHC cards so now the 'I gotta have lots of space' whore inside you can use a 16GB SDHC card" that would make me happy panda,
happy panda indeed
Posted: Feb 5th 2009 7:17PM Santos L Halper said
I really feel like I'm missing something here with this "storage solution." Apparently all it does is that instead of having to move stuff from the Wii menu to an SD card first, you can just go ahead and download something straight to the SD card and then move your games between the SD card and Wii menu afterwards to make room on the menu for what you just downloaded. All it does is switch the 'move vc games to SD card to make room step' to after you've downloaded something. How the fuck can this be considered a solution? Nothing changes!
Posted: Feb 5th 2009 8:42PM lanadapter said
Just how does making purchasing wiiware games easier count as nothing?
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Posted: Feb 5th 2009 10:02PM Santos L Halper said
If I'm going to download a wiiware game I know that I'm gonna need to free up a few hundred blocks. After the "solution" is released the only difference would be that I can free up the space after the download instead of before. To me, that's not really making anything easier. Like I said in my original post, I feel like I'm missing something. Why don't you explain your perspective to me.
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Posted: Feb 5th 2009 8:33PM tkashur said
From what I understand, all Nintendo would have to do is pay liscencing to SD(or whomever is in charge of that) to increase the size limit of the card a wii can take and send out the update to do so. If Nintendo has been making profit off their systems sold as well as games, then they should owe it to not only the fans they've been pissing on, but to all their soccer moms and retirement homes as well.
And as for that so called solution, I thought we were asking for being able to play our games "OFF THE CARD". Not download to it, then the wii. Geez.
I, like many others have stated, have not purchase games for a while...like wiiware launch while. This includes painfully not purchasing World of Goo, Mario RPG, and StrongBad. Will I have to hold off longer? Oh please tell me no, and that this one step less method is a misunderstanding...it makes me sad that this system I slept in front of a store for is just collecting dust that is more visible than the dust that appears on my black ps3.
And as for that so called solution, I thought we were asking for being able to play our games "OFF THE CARD". Not download to it, then the wii. Geez.
I, like many others have stated, have not purchase games for a while...like wiiware launch while. This includes painfully not purchasing World of Goo, Mario RPG, and StrongBad. Will I have to hold off longer? Oh please tell me no, and that this one step less method is a misunderstanding...it makes me sad that this system I slept in front of a store for is just collecting dust that is more visible than the dust that appears on my black ps3.
Posted: Feb 6th 2009 2:41AM (Unverified) said
I know everything says "save to SD," but I wouldn't take the omission of "play from SD" to mean it's not happening. The other possibility is that they're trying to sort out issues to prevent people transferring SD content to other systems easily. Since they didn't build this into the thing to start with I'd imagine they need to watermark files somehow.
Space Invaders Get Even DLC allows you to backup the DLC (which shows up as separate save data rather than making the game channel bigger), but has a message stating that it can only be used on the system it came from. I've got to think there's technical issues involved they're working out. Not being able to play from SD just seems like too big an oversight. I'm frankly confused they're not being more clear about what the SD storage solution is and why or why not allowing SD play will be part of it.
Space Invaders Get Even DLC allows you to backup the DLC (which shows up as separate save data rather than making the game channel bigger), but has a message stating that it can only be used on the system it came from. I've got to think there's technical issues involved they're working out. Not being able to play from SD just seems like too big an oversight. I'm frankly confused they're not being more clear about what the SD storage solution is and why or why not allowing SD play will be part of it.
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